#Adulting explores what it means to grow up, grow out, and grow wiser. Using live action, animation, fiction and documentary storytelling.

#ForReals showcases nonfiction films, tackling themes as diverse as religion, identity, environment, humanity, and sex.

#LOL highlights comic and lighthearted films from U.S. and European storymakers.

#Love&Death investigates our feelings on love and courtship, death and the afterlife, through a variety of film genres and styles.

#WTF shorts run the gamut ? funny, thrilling, disturbing, and of course, sexy ? each morsel leaving you with the wonderment, “what the f@$k?!"

Stanley Kubrick imagined the year 2001 to be a technological world, but for Buenos Aires that same year meant the worst financial crisis in their history. Three teenage friends tormented by their uncertain future decide to avoid reality and escape from everything on a road trip in a stolen pink car. During their odyssey, they'll have to confront their fears, knowing that adulthood is waiting just around the corner. Gabriel Nicoli's debut feature is an unexpected pop vision of a damaged country- a place where Kubrick lives on as a god. -Joshua Moore

Plays with: Videoclub, Alam Raja, 2016, Spain, 8 min

Years after alcoholism drove Avery Wells from his career as a film editor, he finds himself back in San Francisco to finish editing a film called Americana - a picture in which his sister Kate is the lead. As soon as the film is completed, Kate is murdered, and Avery begins to question the circumstances surrounding her death. Grief, shame, and relapse set in as Avery’s suspicion of conspiracy grows. Was her death related to the new film, or his past? -Joshua Moore

In the isolation of the Arctic Circle, Finland's worst cheerleading team is led by an ambitious coach who's tired of losing. To reverse the team's fortunes she heads off to seek inspiration by visiting the world champions in Texas to soak up their winning ways. Emboldened, her new approach pushes her Ice Queens teenage team to its breaking point. Cheer Up transcends the familiar conventions of sports documentaries, where underdogs triumph over adversity and athletes become archetypes oversimplifying the complexities of human nature and instead tells an entirely unique story. -Chris Metzler

Candy injects the "fun" in her dysfunctional life. When your brother is found by a neighbor naked and drunk, you're stuck with a caveman of a boyfriend, you have a dickhead boss, and the madness of everyday life competes with your mother's desperate need to appear normal, it takes everything inside of you to find hope. But maybe being normal is just a construct for other people. Maybe busting out of that everyday life is more important than fitting in. After years of trying to save everyone but herself, high-schooler Candy Cahill decides it's her turn. Set against the backdrop of New York's largest mental hospital in the 1980s, Creedmoria is the story of one girl's dramatic getaway attempt. Family, after all, is an institution. Sometimes you gotta break out.

Detective Dic Jones rifles through the black and white underworld for two lady Vampires on the loose in this dark noir cult insta-classic. Vera and Serina, two super fine, rocked out, glammed up, hard-drinking lesbian bloodsuckers meet their match in the hard-nosed private dick Dic, investigating a vampire fang left at the scene of a crime in this part pastiche, part post-punk thriller-slash-comedy hybrid that was shot in 1984 on 16mm but only finished last year. -Bears Fonte

Join us at Strangelove at Cat Club after film for more dark 80s goodness. Discount admission with your ticket stub!

"I don’t want to show people what the world is like, I want to show people what the world can be, for all its dirty, sexual, crazy, campy and colorful potential." - dir Yony Leyser

A young American writer falls for a Russian hustler and introduces him to his alternative lifestyle amongst Berlin’s queer and underground scenes, but as they make their hedonistic journey through clubs and parties, their inner desires reveal themselves. While examining the differences between expatriate and refugee life, our characters travel through Berlin's layered history, unique subcultural landscape and visit real locations where many Berlin-based personalities give performances, often playing themselves. These include ‘Godmother of Punk’ Nina Hagen, cult musician and performance artist Peaches, Rosa Von Praunheim, Rummelsnuff, Blood Orange, Einstuerzende Neubauten and Blixa Bargeld (formerly of Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds). - Jennifer Junkyard Morris

In the aftermath of a race riot, Abe Forsythe’s challenging dark comedy follows two carloads of idiots out to make trouble. In one, a gang of young white friends are sick of Muslim immigrants taking over their beaches. In the other, recent transplants from Lebanon are sick being pushed around. Both sides are fueled by macho rage, armed and seriously stupid. Forsythe’s film seems eerily timely in this era when people comfortably air racist grievances and won’t share blame as violence erupts.  -Bears Fonte

Tom, an overweight young man, takes refuge at his grandmother’s cabin in rural Protection, Illinois, in an attempt to bury the years of being bullied and feeling rejected. While in town, he meets a precocious blind girl named Lilly, who shows him how to be accepted and loved. Tender, funny and dramatic, Empty Space is a micro-budget cinematic treasure showing characters not often depicted onscreen as leads, in a unique coming of age story. -Chris Metzler

Filmmaker Charlie Lyne (Beyond Clueless) returns to SF IndieFest with his latest documentary, assembled entirely from horror films. Selecting obscure classics and recent hits spanning several decades and originating from countless countries, the film explores whether horror movies know us better than we know ourselves. Expert editing builds fantastic tension and atmosphere, separate from but connected to the source material, and creates a narrative all its own. Fear Itself shows that we can most be ourselves in the dark, where fear and horror are a part of us, not outside of us. -Chris Metzler

Dive deep into the eccentric life of punk rock reggae singer HR of Bad Brains. The charismatic frontman's explosive live performances helped pioneer hardcore punk while delivering an enlightening message of positive mental attitude. HR's heavy devotion to the Rastafarian faith guided him in a spiritual direction, but over the years HR’s increasingly unpredictable behavior convinced many that he is suffering from mental illness. Finding Joseph I delicately illustrates the true story behind the legendary lead singer's life, career and struggles, with never-before-seen archival footage and exclusive interviews. -Chris Metzler

Recently dumped by his fiancé and with a stagnating standup routine, aspiring comedian-slash-copywriter Paul (Alex Karpovsky, Girls) is stuck. The manager of the club where he performs suggests he take some time off to update his comedy material, and in waltzes his childhood friend Jason Black (Wyatt Russell, Everybody Wants Some), a free-spirited, famous folk singer, shaking off hangovers and women from the night before. About to embark on a solo acoustic tour of the East Coast, Jason suggests Paul needs to get his mojo back?and he should start by opening for Jason on tour. They set off on the road together, picking up a new act (folk singer Bryn, played by Meredith Hagner) on the way. But as creative tensions rise and love triangles form, rifts are exposed in their otherwise affable camaraderie and the road trip?and the ulterior motives behind it?start to make less and less sense to Paul.

Peppered with cameos by the likes of David Cross and Michael Ian Black, this music-infuse

A family seemingly living the American Dream leaves behind a digital trail of deceit on the internet as they obsessively chronicle their shopping trips and vacations and the mountains of debt piling up. Compiled from over 100 hours of innocuous home videos on YouTube, Fleischer-Camp creates his own take on ‘found footage,’ cobbling together a fiction from film never intended as anything but family record. -Bears Fonte

Plays with: Once Upon A Time In The USSR (7 min), Counter-Change (14 min) and Battlestar Abstractica (8 min).

During one fateful weekend, the family of brilliant astrophysicist Albert James (Scott Bellis, The X-Files) has a complete meltdown, setting in motion a raucous and hilarious series of events that mirror his radical theories of the behavior of the universe. Featuring a superb ensemble cast anchored by Bellis' sublime performance, Grand Unified Theory captures a family falling apart only to come together again. -Joshua Moore

After a terrible virus ravages human civilization, Ann finds herself living alone, foraging for supplies. The only survivors seem to be roving hordes of infected creatures with a taste for human flesh. One fateful day, Ann crosses paths with two more survivors, but after surviving on her own for so long, she struggles to relate to them and their desire to settle down and start a new community. Both a stomach-clenching thriller and a meaningful drama, Here Alone is less about the threat itself than the people who are surviving it. -Chris Metzler

Sidney always wanted to be a rock star, but he ends up working for tips as a dive bar drag queen instead. He swindles his friends and family and turns a trick or two to pay the rent. His life takes a dramatic turn when his ex unexpectedly drops their 11-year-old son off and vanishes. He does his best to hide his personal demons, but single parenthood soon starts to overwhelm. -Jennifer Junkyard Morris

The classic coming-of-age premise “You guys wanna go see a dead body?” from Stand By Me gets an update and twist as fifteen-year-old Bia becomes obsessed with a series of unsolved murders and the graveyard Facebook pages of the victims. Drawn into the world of darkness, she finds more in common with the dead girls than her own group of friends.  Visually alluring, it’s a refreshing, unapologetic love letter to melancholic curiosity, something every teen passes through. -Bears Fonte

Looking to settle scores, Drew Glass (Niko Nicotera) returns home to the town beset by a drug king pin (Mark Boone Junior) who is also his father. Interrogated by a cop, Drew serves as the classic unreliable narrator, more interested in expressing his theme than relaying the story in a linear fashion. With a stellar cast delivering nuanced performances and a connect-the-dots plot, this rural gothic thriller draws the audience deeper down the well of revenge by painting portraits with blood, rather than dragging us through it.-Bears Fonte

Interracial couple Gina (Melanie Lynskey) and Mack (Nelsan Ellis), and their sixth grader Clark (Armani Jackson) uproot their Brooklyn liberal bubble lifestyle to suburban Washington for a cushy college post. Initially looked at as an exotic curiosity, the family searches for a new identity.  

Clark, already conflicted about who he is, quickly becomes a target for two neighborhood white girls who confess the town ‘totally needed a black kid.’ He’s desperate to fit in, and getting conflicting messages from his parents dealing with their own crap.

Annie J. Howell’s screenplay (based on personal experiences) captures the subtle and layered everyday issues that exist as ripples to a much larger discussion we don’t always feel a part of. - Bears Fonte

Join IndieFest staff, volunteers and filmmakers at the Wrap Party at Bull vs Bear at the Alamo Drafthouse!

Long estranged from his family, migrant laborer Lupe finds relief from the backbreaking work of harvesting peaches in California’s Central Valley through beer-drenched camaraderie and a quiet love affair with fellow immigrant Gloria. Soon the stability of his daily routine begins to crack under the weight of a life scarred with regret and missed opportunities. Filmed in a classic neorealist style, Lupe Under the Sun is at once an intimately drawn meditation on life’s missed chances and a tale of the universal struggles of immigrants.  -Chris Metzler

Unmarried Mara has mysteriously fallen pregnant. This poses a problem for her fellow residents of the small fishing village on the Danube delta, where religion mixes with superstition like earth with water. Expelled from her village, Mara finds employment at the nearby spa hotel Tekir where infertile women are treated with the sacred Danube mud. When her world collides with that of the well-to-do, eccentric cosmopolitan Lili, magic combines with power and tradition with modernity to become the answer to Lili’s desire to have children – and Mara’s ‘immaculate’ conception. -Jennifer Junkyard Morris

An art show curated from the finest dumpsters and flea markets. Hilarious Program notes. Complimentary beverages. Radio Valencia DJs provide the soundtrack. All are welcome.

Creatively exploring the themes of territory, diversity and belonging through the intertwined lives of neighbors in San Francisco's Mission District in the early aughts, Mission Movie weaves a fictionalized narrative of cutting edge socio-political change, foreshadowing what will happen in the rest of America, as it becomes a multi-ethnic society and deals head on with the challenges of conflicting values. Co-presented by the Roxie Theater this free retrospective screening is a celebration of the life and career of award-winning Bay Area filmmaker (and one of ATA’s founders) Lise Swenson who passed away this year. -Chris Metzler

"This compellingly quiet and visually stunning film invites us into the singular worlds of seven men who live outside the bright lights of a popular tourist destination. In remarkably candid monologues and interviews, these fascinating individuals describe their lives and explain what matters to them, what they consider significant; ultimately, we gain some sense of how they find meaning in the world. Myrtle Beach presents these men to us without explicit judgment or commentary and thereby reminds us of the mysteriousness of our world and our fellow human beings."

Danny’s girlfriend Noa leaves him because he’s “not manly enough.” Sad and lonely, he slits his wrists only to discover he is not a man at all, but a robot?an indestructible war machine. Moreover, his girlfriend did not leave him?she was kidnapped by a mysterious organization searching for him. Living in a country full of conflict, the directors of the film play at pure escapism, but end up making a film­ that is stealthily deep. -Bears Fonte

Every high school film ever made bears witness to the roller-coaster ride of adolescence. Filmmaker Chris Brown builds an ambitious hybrid of fiction and non-fiction in which he collaborates with real high school seniors to tell their personal stories in narrative form. Sometimes funny, often brutal, but always honest, The Other Kids is a must-see addition to the genre of coming-of-age films, one that will stand out for its genuine and brave portrayal of what kids must overcome in the final days of high school. -Chris Metzler

A mysterious stranger arrives in Sarajevo and barges into security guard Damir's reclusive world. Little by little she takes over his apartment, his life, even his dreams, until finally she threatens his very existence.  Can Damir find it in himself to struggle out of this trap and regain control of his life, or will Tasya take him over completely, leaving no trace of Damir in the world? In her debut feature, director Emma Rozanski has crafted an eerie atmospheric suspense tale on the blurred nature of self identity. -Joshua Moore

Country clubbers, workers, lovers, rivals, gods, ghosts, Hollywood retirees, Native Americans, Hispanics, whites, the fleeting and the eternal, the deep and the dead, the people behind the gates, all mix up in this chronicle of a dying American joy. Using modern-day characters to illuminate an infamous 1908 manhunt for Willie Boy, a Native American who outran a mounted posse on foot across 500 miles of desert in the Coachella Valley, Pow Wow presents individuals that have, in many ways, utilized the desert to survive and run free. -Chris Metzler

In the aftermath of the Arab Spring, Tunisia was left with the task of rebuilding a government in a deeply divided nation. The ousting of the authoritarian regime was the easy part. Two women, a journalist and an Islamist politician, publicly envision two different dreams for the shape of democracy in their nation. They may disagree on issues of free speech and religion in politics, but they find common ground as outspoken women in an urgency of moving swiftly in the critical post-revolution years, lest extremists seize power.  -Chris Metzler

In search of her grandmother's wedding dress, Jenny travels to the Salton Sea. Amid the brutal ecological disaster of the sea and mounds of family debris, she reconnects with her eccentric aunt and begins to uncover a murky family history 234 feet below sea level. When secrets emerge, she must make hard choices about her future to be free from the past.  Join us at 6p on Feb 9 to celebrate Swenson's work and life with a hosted reception before the screening. -Chris Metzler

Dog groomer Michael Pinkney (played remarkably by Michael Pinkney), lives in a rat-infested apartment striving for his creative dreams, namely an all-cat live action remake of CARRIE. Then Cora (Sonja Kinski) steps into his life and he invites her to his place to see his “weird video art that nobody wants to watch.” Easily distracted by his own fantasies, Michael’s reality becomes increasingly hijacked by his own surreal art until his date descends into inexplicable chaos. -Bears Fonte

When Matt (Thomas Mann), a high school outcast teased relentlessly for his eyepatch, discovers Jill, an overweight girl with dyed hair (Lily Mae Harrington), he realizes the two of them have more in common than anyone else. Elmo (Ely Henry), a boy troubled by his own sexuality, completes the trio of out-crowd ‘freaks’ in this Neil Labute executive-produced film, that starts as a feel-good flip of a John Hughes film and ends up far more vicious. -Bears Fonte

A young man from a remote Chinese village is left to fend for himself and his younger siblings in the wake of his parents’ departure. Money is tight and he turns to a life of petty crime in order to provide for them and the rising cost of his little brother's school tuition (though he hasn't been in weeks). The sister works as a maid at a hotel and soon finds her job is in jeopardy unless she sleeps with her boss. -Joshua Moore

Bob, formerly known as Captain Truth, was once the savior of San Francisco. Punches didn’t hurt him. His movements were unbelievably fast. He could fly when he needed to. Now in his forties, he struggles to live an ordinary life sans superpowers with his supportive and increasingly-concerned girlfriend, Mimi. As a method of working through his midlife crisis, he begins to craft a memoir, exploring the loss of abilities that once made him extraordinary. -Jeff Ross

A Halloween road trip, witches in trees, a movie star and a gnome. Two women go on the lam for a murder they didn't commit and soon become lovers and Detroit's Most Wanted.  Barbara Troy’s film is a younger and gayer Thelma and Louise. Featuring Elizabeth Keener (The 'L' Word) and Jaclyn Strez (Detroit WInter). Plus locals Mackenzie Conn and Kat Parsons. - Jennifer Junkyard Morris

Ferris Bueller's Day Off meets Election in this 90s-set comedy about a sly opportunist high school president's scheme to rise to the top while avoiding impeachment. Tim Timmerman has aspirations of attending Yale and becoming a famous politician, but has absolutely no interest in doing any of the work to get there. He soon realizes the quickest pathway to Washington is befriending a rival student and rubbing shoulders with her Senator father. Nothing can stop Tim from reaching the top... except himself. -Joshua Moore

According to statistics, the average Serbian train driver will accidentally kill 15-20 people in the course of their career. Ilja, the 60s something hero of this macabre comedy has infamously set the record at 28. The victims are often those who want to commit suicide, the careless ones, drunken ones, or just absentminded ones. Due to retire, Ilja must choose whether to introduce his adopted son into the bloody family business. Serbia's official entry for the Academy Awards. -Joshua Moore

A lone scientist maintains an underground bunker for the coming global nuclear disaster. But after becoming prematurely isolated, he slowly begins to question his own reality and whether he is truly alone. Director Richard Mundy's immersive psychological thriller is a tense and unsettling nightmare you'll never be sure you've woken up from. -Joshua Moore

Four inseparable French teenagers in a small town fancy themselves the real West Coast gangstas. Their total embrace of the gangsta rap lifestyle brings them together as a gang, but also contempt from their classmates. When one of the boys discovers he'll be moving away, the gang sets out to live one last crazy adventure together while plotting their revenge on the popular kids who've done them wrong. Nothing will ever be the same again. -Joshua Moore

7th grader Thomas lives in a small city in Denmark. He's an outsider and knows how to make bombs. He's also in love with the school bad girl, Vikki. To win her over, Thomas plots an explosive act of revenge on their gym teacher's bicycle. He soon finds himself introduced to a new life of parties, booze, sex, and violence that goes against everything his police officer father stands for. The closer Thomas gets to Vikki, the more dangerous his world becomes. -Joshua Moore

Mud has been trapped in his daily routine for a long time. Each day he leaves his pristine apartment to go into one of those spotless office spaces in a glass skyscraper where there seems to be no escape. But one day, an old friend shows up at his doorstep, disturbing the comforting pattern he has created for himself, and suggests that Mud take up lucid dreaming. Thus he experiences complete freedom by dreaming himself across the country in a psychedelic Volkswagen with the guiding words of philosopher Alan Watts. -Chris Metzler